Board deems documentary showing 'an isolated incident'

ELLSWORTH – This past March, seventh grade teacher Billie Jo Johnson at Ellsworth Middle School showed the documentary The Most Dangerous Year to the seventh grade Language Arts Class. The documentary follows a small group of families in 2016 that fight against anti-transgender legislation to protect their children from what they feel is inhuman, transphobic legislation.

Since the documentary was not part of the course curriculum, Johnson didn’t notify students' parents/guardians prior to showing it. The documentary is no longer available for the seventh grade classes to view.

The Journal reached out to Johnson, who declined to be interviewed.

The Ellsworth Community School District considered this occurrence to fall under the “Controversial Issues in the Classroom” policy and took action based off of the policy’s criteria. The policy has not been updated since 2007 and was not updated as a result of this incident. The Human Growth and Development Curriculum has not been altered because of this isolated incident in March, as said by Ellsworth School District Superintendent, Barry Cain. The curriculum has remained the same since its last review in 2017.

“It is important to remember that the showing of the video was not part of this curriculum and was not an approved video for the middle school level or classroom,” said Cain. “As noted in our original letter to all parents, the video was removed from the class and the syllabus was shared with parents to view in order to improve communications with the parents about the topics of the class to allow parents with students in the class to opt out of any topic to be addressed.”

School Board President Doug Peterson shared how the school board approached the issue when it first occurred.

“It was an error on the teacher's part by showing something that was not in the approved curriculum,” Peterson said. “Parents brought it to the attention of the administration and conversations were happening that someone saw on social media and brought it to our attention. But the administration moved very swiftly to curtail the situation, make sure it wasn't shown to any other classes, that it was the fact that it was a one-time incident. We made sure that the teacher knew that it was not an approved part of the approved curriculum, and sent out a notification to all parents. So that they understood what had happened, and that it wasn't part of the approved curriculum. Parents did come to the following meeting, to the next school board meeting, and there were some public comments that were made to address the board about the situation, which the board was aware of, because we've been informed of how it is being handled.”

Although nothing was altered in the EMS Human Growth and Development Curriculum by the school board curriculum committee, who held several meetings discussing the topic, a book related to sexuality and gender studies was removed from the EMS library. The book, “Beyond Magenta” by Susan Kilkin, was deemed not to be age appropriate for middle schoolers.

“This book was pulled from EMS shelves and labeled to get sent to the EHS library due to age appropriateness concerns. The former principal/ curriculum director provided this review and reported this to the board at the June board meeting. In review, there is only one book removed from the middle school library,” said Cain.

Aside from moving “Beyond Magenta” from the EMS to the EHS library, no further action has been made as a result of Johnson showing the documentary to her class. The school board has settled the matter as a simple communications error and believes such an incident will not occur again or require any changes to the current curriculum.